


The Gates To Hell

by buttcat



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Actual Insanity, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:44:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttcat/pseuds/buttcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The gang are minding their own business when vicious kaiju begin to assault the Earth from the deep. In the face of disaster, what're they to do? Heal old rifts? Overcome rivalries? (Nahhh.) Now, it's war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There's a distinct lack of IASIP fic anywhere, which is a problem that clearly needs to be solved by insane, universe-bridging impossible scifi. This is very much something I wrote for myself. To make the universes align a liiiittle better, I'm adjusting the gang's birthdays forward a bit so they fall in the late 1980s/1990s. I realize how little canonical sense this makes and I don't CARE

Mac did not go to Charlie's funeral.

Since there was no body, he figured Charlie couldn't really be dead. He was probably just MIA. Shit like that happened all the time, right? People would get seperated in natural disasters or terrorist attacks or whatever, and they'd show up months later at the front door with long hair and dirty clothes and shoes with holes in the soles from walking so far. Charlie had such a shit sense of direction, even when he was in Philly, so it wasn't difficult to imagine him getting turned around and utterly lost in the chaos of the attack on San Fransisco.

Dee reminded him of the nuclear strike after, but the government had evacuated people, hadn't they? They'd gotten mostly everyone out? That's what everyone said. San Fransisco and much of the surrounding area might have been a wasteland but there were survivors. There were survivors and Charlie had to be one of them. He was out there, dicking around and probably confused as all hell. Probably thought he was still in Philly, the dumb bastard. 

That they'd left Pennsylvania at all had been Dennis' fault. The trip had been his idea, after all, a celebratory sort of thing. They weren't celebrating anything in particular - why bother - but they wanted to go, and they were all in generally good moods, and Charlie still hadn't ever left the state after their first abortive attempt at a road trip. With Dee at the helm - she was the only one with a car, fucking hell, if it was up to the rest of them she would've stayed at home - they traversed the country, stopping here and there to argue and sightsee and purchase cool stuff that they mostly abandoned at rest stops. They strapped the trailer to the back and took turns riding in it (except for Dee, who wasn't allowed), and then at night covered the floor with pillows and blankets and fell asleep side-by-side. Mac would wake with Charlie's horrible morning breath in his face, foreheads nearly touching, their legs tangled together underneath the blankets. 

The first half of that trip, those were some of the best memories Mac'd ever had. Charlie was still sharp in his mind, laughing at Mac's tattoos and tripping into exhibits at shitty roadside museums and getting his pants leg stuck in escalators like a goddamn two-year-old. Charlie was still there sitting next to him in the dark on a hill in the middle of nowhere, stars like nothing they'd ever seen above them, their fingers inching closer and closer until they touched. Charlie blushing and laughing in the quiet because hey, it was all cool, they were best friends. They were best friends and everything was good in the world.      

Then there was San Fransisco.

They had been in the heart of it when it happened. First, the earthquake - the road tearing itself apart before them, buildings toppling slowly into the water, cars careening around them - and then distantly a ceaseless unearthly howling, as if the gates to hell themselves had swung open.  They'd been half-in, half-out of the car when Dee gunned it. 

When they stopped, hours later and miles away, Charlie wasn't there. It'd been his turn to ride in the back, but when they went to look the door was half open and the trailer was cavernous and empty inside. In their panic they'd forgotten to check for him at all. 

There was no going back. There was the creature, and the army, and then the nuclear strikes, and by then it was unthinkable to return. Frank and Dennis and Dee had screamed at each other the whole way back - it was obviously your fault! maybe if you hadn't taken off like that - ! maybe if we hadn't left in the first place - ! - and Mac stayed silent in the back seat. As they got closer to Philadelphia the others traded theories back and forth and Mac quietly got smashed, ripping through the cases of beer they had left and then through a dozen cheap gas-station forties. It was the Russians, obviously, Frank would say, commie red bastards, and Dee would tell him he was a bigoted idiot, and Mac would lie down on his side and try to forget. 

They woudn't really know what had happened until they'd gotten back to the bar, and then they were smothered in it, suffocated in a sea of newscasts and interviews that covered the attack over and over and over again. For months after the television at the bar would shuffle through pictures of the kaiju from every angle, reporters relaying the same ten facts again and again to a terrified audence. Trespasser, they nicknamed it. Axehead. They were starved for information but no one seemed to know anything. Hell had been opened - but no one knew why.   

 

For a long time after their return, Mac  _hated_ Dennis. He understood Dee, forgave her for running, remembered the frantic terror they'd all shared when the earth had shattered and those horrible, heart-rending screams had washed over them. And he forgave Frank for doubting him, for beleiving without question that Charlie was dead forever, because Mac could hear him sobbing sometimes in the office when he thought no one was around. But Dennis -

Dennis didn't care. Dennis played on it, used it as a buisness oppertunity. He chatted up girls with it - _hey, I was there, you know. I lost my best friend in that attack_ \- and pretended like he was some sort of celebrity, some sort of survivor. He broke off a bit of cement from the alley and put a little plaque on it, pretended it was a peice of the Golden Gate Bridge. He wanted to do shirts with kaiju on them. He didn't understand, he didn't hurt, and that was unforgivable to Mac, who felt the loss like an open wound. He was raw with grief and lonliness and Dennis was cracking jokes, Dennis was hamming it up for the chicks. 

 

They waited four months and then they did the funeral, which almost no one went to. Dee gave Mac the pictures after, just so he could see how it'd looked, and it was nice. There were flowers, and an okay coffin, and everyone dressed up for it. One of the photos had Charlie's mom kissing the empty coffin goodbye, her eyes and cheeks red, looking older and more tired than she ever had, and Mac had to choke back tears. It was all very unfair. He thought of Dennis pretending to suffer and he wished, deeply and steadfastedly, that they'd left Dennis behind instead.

Right after the funeral they put of a memorial. Mac didn't want to but Frank insisted, so they hung up Charlie's stupid horse shirt in the bar as a sort of momento. Dennis suggested they hang up his y-fronts as well, and Mac nearly punched him in the mouth. He'd never hated anyone as much as he had in that moment, hated that stupid smug grin and those stupid high cheekbones, that stupid mind that didn't  _care._

Anyway, Charlie didn't need a shrine, Charlie needed a search party. Charlie needed a milk-carton advertisement, like they used to do for missing kids.

 

But as years passed, and Charlie had yet to return, Mac found he had slowly, unhappily, gotten used to a universe sans his best friend. It took a while but he forgave Dennis, mostly, and they stayed in the apartment together and joked and argued like they always had. By the time half a year had gone by, they'd gone back to their former back-and-forth rapport, ribbing each other and refusing to clean up after themselves and assuring Dee she did very much look like an ostrich. When the second Kaiju tore through the Phillipines, they watched it live in the bar together, equally horrified and excited by its gnashing monster-movie maw. They helped Frank pack up Charlie's shit - there wasn't a lot - in preparation for the new roomate, who was some immigrant type who really didn't speak a lot of English. Mac stored the boxes in his room, figuring Charlie'd want his horrible torn shirts and electric grill back when he returned. The boxes migrated from their neat stacks in the center of the room to deep underneath the dustiest bits of his bed, and as the war progressed and Charlie failed to materialize they are long forgotten, replaced with mundane memories of everyday life, occasonally interrupted with new kaiju attacks in places too far away to care about (like Sydney, and Canada). And then there are the jaegers and goddamn Mac's never been so excited in his life, and he and Dennis are making project badass tapes together pretending to be pilots, and they tell each other that shit yeah, they'd be drift compatible, they'd be unstoppable if the chance was handed to them. They watch jaegers combat kaiju like they're watching a film, swallowing down beer and cheering on the robots, especially the American one. Russia introduces the Cherno Alpha and Frank admits, grudgingly, maybe those vodka-chugging commies aren't so bad after all.      

Charlie is never forgotten, just distant. Every year on the anniversary of K-Day they pour out an extra drink for him, they tip their glasses to his horrible horse shirt, and get totally blasted. They think he would've liked that. The deep wound Mac'd suffered at his loss slowly scabs over and heals, and when California is attacked a second time, he admits to himself at last that he isn't going to see Charlie again.

It doesn't feel like the end of the world.           


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i apologize for this chapter in advance oops

The worst part of elementary school for Charlie was when they had to read portions of books aloud, in front of everyone.

Charlie read slow, and tentative, like he was wading waist-deep in swamp water. Words came soft and sluggish and not always in the right order, because the letters were never where he thought they should be, always swapping places and bouncing away from him instead of staying still. He'd read something and the teacher'd correct him - no Charlie, that's a b - and suddenly it was a b, it was always a b, except only a second ago it was definitely a p. So she learned not to call on him too often, and only ever gave him a sentence or two to read aloud, but it was still incredibly horrible. He could feel everyone's eyes on him, feel their cruel amusement as he fought to discern between an "l" or an "i", a "t" or an "f". It sucked and it took forever and most of all he hated it because he understood what he was reading, he knew what the sentences meant and he followed the narrative but he just couldn't pin it down on paper, couldn't map it out with his mouth.

His mom usually didn't have the time to read to him, but the couple times she did were great. She had an ancient, beat up copy of The Hobbit that she'd borrowed from the local library and never returned, and she'd perch next to him on the sofa and hold it in her lap and work her way through the chapters aloud. She wasn't the best narrator, but she was certainly enthusiastic. She gave all the characters different voices and when exciting things started to happen she got excited too, so her voice would get higher and fill with anticipation as she worked toward the climax. She would forget where they'd left off, and sometimes read the same chapter twice, but Charlie didn't mind at all. He loved the story but also just the rhythm of the words themselves, the way they fit together like a puzzle.

But The Hobbit was not enticing enough to inspire Charlie to try and read on his own. The story was interesting but it had really tiny font and footnotes, and it was printed on paper that was yellow and thin and so easily torn in his excited, clumsy, child's hands, which intimidated him out of attempting to read alone. It remained untouched when his mother was working, or sleeping, or watching television, or having men over, which was most of the time. No, what was really enticing - enough to spur Charlie to slog through each sentence, double check the letters, reorder it in his head to make sense, whisper it aloud to make sure - was weird zoology. Specifically, deep sea creatures.

The pictures drew him in first. He'd been waiting in the school library for his mom and he saw, displayed on top of the freestanding shelves, a book with this horrible fanged _thing_ on the cover. It was the ugliest goddamn creature he'd ever seen in his life.

It took him nearly an hour but he learned it was called a viper fish, and that it only lived at least 300 feet below the surface, and its teeth were so incredibly huge they didn't all fit inside its mouth, they had to curve up and around and nearly touch its eyeballs which were bulbous and dead-looking, and it had a blinky light on its back to attract prey _which it then impaled on its fangs_ -

Charlie's mom had gotten sidetracked by a boyfriend and was really late picking him up that day, but he didn't really mind. His waits in the library, which had been mind-numbingly dull ever since Mac started walking home himself, had suddenly become the highlight of his day at school. And the reading got easier as he went, just a little bit, so when he worked his way through the picture books and illustrated dictionaries, he was able to struggle through the chapter books. It was slow going, and he had to ask the librarian to define some of the words for him, and he had to put his finger under the words as he went because his eyes would jump from line to line if he didn't, but he'd finished his first chapter book ever by the end of the year and for that he was proud. Maybe he wasn't able to read in front of the class yet - he still stammered and stuttered and fidgeted underneath the weight of their eyes - but on his own, if he took his time, he could do it.

Mac was the only person who knew, because no one else really listened. But that was okay because Mac was really cool. He knew karate, and he could throw things pretty far, and he also listened to Charlie's facts. Charlie spent nearly all his time outside of school with Mac, searching for good throwing rocks in the allies behind his house. 

"Did you know," Charlie would say, and Mac would always turn toward him. "Did you know Pacific Blackdragon babies have their eyes on stalks? Except they suck them in when they get older." Or, "Did you know glass squid can be almost ten feet long?"

And then Mac would say, "Weird," and "That's cool," and he'd see a dog or a rat or something and nail it with a rock at _least_ half the time. 

 

Middle school was a lot different. Mac and Charlie were still best friends, but now there was also Dennis, and sometimes Dee too, and Charlie wasn't too sure about them. Dennis told Charlie he was dumb, which didn't really bother him but he said it to Mac as well, and he was generally pretty rude to everyone, and he had terrible aim. He also liked to cut Charlie off when he was talking. Charlie would say "Did you know," and Dennis wouldn't even bother turning around, he'd just tell him really loud to shut the fuck up. And Charlie would.  

 He stopped talking about deep-sea creatures at all after a while. 

Charlie grew to cherish his back alley dog-bashing adventures with Mac, because Dennis refused to go along. He thought they were dumb. He never got to see how great it was and Charlie was glad for that, because it was something only for him and Mac. Just the two of them, chasing down mangy strays and finding weird stuff in the garbage and startling homless people, and talking about everything - what kind of tattoos are you gonna get? What do you think your dad looks like? (I bet he's a famous billionare.) If you were a superhero, what would you be, and how badly would you beat up Superman? 

He never had those conversations with Dennis. With Dennis, it was mostly about girls. It wasn't that Charlie disliked girls, it was just that he didn't really care about them. There were a couple who seemed okay, but most of them didn't like roadkill or guns or superheroes, which were basically his favorite things, so overall it just wasn't worth the effort. He had Mac, after all. He was pretty much set.   

The second most different thing about middle school is that Charlie discovered inhailants. They made it difficult to think straight but it was worth it to feel that rush, the chemical spike that jolted his brain and brought him up to the top of the world. The high didn't last nearly long enough and by high school he found himself huffing glue in between classes, tongue thick with sour toxicity, breath like a bottle of bleach. He tried weed in his freshman year and realized he didn't much like it - it was relaxing but he didn't want relaxing, he wanted the earth to spin, he wanted his heart to outrace his mind. So he breathed sharpies and aerosol cans and paint thinner, and he wandered through high school with half his brain in the clouds. Reading was hard but it was _especially_ hard when he was high, so he more or less gave up and spent his remedial English classes in a perpetual trance. The words didn't just swap places, they swam and curled right off the page. He'd spend an hour at his desk watching _Hamlet_  or _The Color Purple_ swirl across the ceiling, twine its way around his classmates and teacher, and still not comprehend an ounce of it. He had to repeat a class once and came very, very close to repeating at least three others, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Huffing was so much better than trying to follow along in class, it was so much better than all the marine animal facts in the world.

He also really liked alchohol, he discovered. That was, actually, one thing Dennis was good for - his parents always had the best alchohol, and also the most, so they didn't really notice when it went missing. Mac's mom drank a lot, but she kept close track of her stuff and was quick to see if any was gone. Charlie's mom only drank sherry, which was disgusting. So he went over to Dennis' with Mac to get drunk, and he hid in his basement to huff glue, and life went on. Dennis mocked him for it but Dennis mocked him for everything, and besides, he did cocaine, so he couldn't really talk.             

Anyway the moral of this is that his friends were mostly huge dicks, even Mac sometimes, which is why Charlie was not surprised when they abandoned him in San Fransisco as soon as the earth became to quake.  

 


End file.
